Business and leisure travel has been on the rise in the last two decades. People are flying more today than they were in the '80s. Consequently, the incidence of travelers changing their itineraries has also increased, and cancellations and modifications of itineraries have become a common practice. The concept of unused tickets (defined as a ticket or voucher for a travel service, which was not used, cannot be fully refunded, and has a residual value of at least $1.00 that can be applied to a future travel service purchase) has arisen as a result of the increase in itinerary changes. With today's travel booking systems, tracking these cancelled or modified tickets is not easy. Recently, a study of a Fortune-100 company reported that said company lost about $6 million in expired unused tickets in 2003 alone. Also, in some cases, a “power traveler” would like to be able to use the “best” possible ticket out of a set of unused tickets.
What is clearly needed is a system that allows travelers to manage their unused tickets and to use them in their future bookings before those tickets expire, and further, to be able to select and use the best possible ticket out of a set of unused tickets.